Much of the content that is consumed by individuals is supported, at least in part, through advertising revenue. For example, network television shows, and, even prior to that, radio broadcasts, were funded through the sale of advertising wherein advertisers paid for the right to present advertisements to the audience of such shows and broadcasts. As another example, print media, such as magazines and newspapers, are paid by advertisers to include printed advertisements, with such advertiser payments reducing the amount subscribers of such print media would otherwise have to pay to access the content printed thereon.
Utilizing advertising revenue to decrease the cost of content to individual consumers of such content enables content distributors to reach a broader audience. More specifically, content consumers that are averse to advertising can obtain content through the purchase thereof, where the purchase price paid by such consumers can be increased to reflect the lack of any advertising revenue being utilized to offset the cost of the content. At an opposite end of the spectrum can be content consumers that are agnostic to, or even desirous of, advertising. Such content consumers can be provided the content for free, with the cost of the content being, instead, offset by the advertising revenue. In between those two ends of the spectrum, the cost of content, to consumers of such content, can be reduced in varying degrees by advertising provided with such content, where the advertising revenue received from such advertising offsets the reduced cost, to the content consumer, of the content. Consequently, content distributors can profitably distribute content to a broad range of content consumers, including content consumers that are willing to purchase content at an increased price to avoid advertising, and content consumers that are desirous of purchasing content at a reduced price, or even free, in exchange for consuming advertising provided with such content.
Traditionally, advertisements are inserted into content through manual processes, whereby one or more humans, utilizing human decision-making, select where to insert such advertisements into the content. The manual processing of content to select where such content can be interrupted, such as for advertisements, is inefficient and requires a substantial investment of human resources. Furthermore, such manual processing is inflexible, with each identified interruption point being utilized in the subsequent presentation of such content.